Can there be real trust and love without disagreement?
I have this theory that disagreement, or the ability to disagree, is a key sign of a truly loving and trust-filled relationship. I was not raised in an environment where I could test this theory out. Mine was a household of fake kindness and what I recently learned has a name, "toxic positivity". The message i absorbed as a child was, if you disagree with me then you don't love me. Family unity at all costs. The cost? No one speaks truth. Love is shallow. There is no real intimacy.
After 30 years of marriage, my partner and I are still learning how to disagree with each other. And our love deepens.
this is a great term "toxic positivity". It is rampant in parts of my family. What I find so toxic is how positive the toxic can appear and have a nasty or shallow undercurrent that is absolutely intolerable to me. The same is true of poetry right? This is what I believe poetry attempts to undercut with its vehicles for cutting to the heart of truth.
My partner and I often debate a point until I suggest we’re saying the same thing from different perspectives -- at which point I laugh and he grimaces. I love loving someone who cares about the same things from a different angle. When I suggest he’s a pessimist, he says he’s a realist. And when he grins, it’s the best grin.
“Delicious disagreement” is such a wonderful way of saying I care what my son thinks even when it is different from what I believe. Sometimes when we debate a topic on text, there can be misunderstanding, and we need to avoid such temptation. But in the face-to-face “environment of trust and love” we share when together, I feel comforted by our conversations and attempts to make our thoughts known to one another. Thank you, Padraig, for so eloquently and lovingly explaining this truth about the importance of meaningful relationships.
Thank you much for hints on how to approach or reframe disagreements - with creativity and possible change.
Will keep it jovial by sharing how my husband and my good friend share a love for well-browned toast (which I refer to as “burnt”) while I prefer lightly toasted, which they call “warm bread.” It is a lovely and continuing jest we share with one another. Now I’m off to enjoy my lightly toasted bread with apricot jam!
Years ago my friend Betsy moved into an old farmhouse. When my friend Suzanne and I came to visit, we were immediately struck by the brown and white large-checked wallpaper in the kitchen. I immediately declared it hideous and Betsy joined my chorus, saying removing it was on the top of her priority list. We made quite a ruckus about how ugly it was. But Suzanne said, while she didn't particularly like it, our pronouncements about it were only opinions and we shouldn't be so critical. I maintained that there is such a thing as "standards" when it comes to art and decoration and that no one in their right mind would find the wallpaper attractive. Suzanne held her ground, and we continued the disagreement laughing and teasing each other, pretending that the kitchen walls were a matter of great importance. Now, years later, that conversation stays with me as I continue to examine my own entrenched prejudices and certainty about other things. I listen to people say, "How could anyone think ..." (fill in the blank), and realize they have closed the door to deeper understanding and empathy - have, in that one phrase, destroyed an opportunity for connection. I still say the wallpaper in Betsy's kitchen was objectively atrocious, but I say it with a chuckle, knowing that there's room for so much more.
"How could anyone think ..." (fill in the blank), and realize they have closed the door to deeper understanding and empathy - have, in that one phrase, destroyed an opportunity for connection." Thayer, this made me tear up. I am writing this on my heart. Thank you. Beautiful.
No! Getting rid of it was truly one of the first things Betsy did when she and her husband moved into the house. She replaced it with a soft grayish paint - inviting, warm and soothing.
That is so awesome! Thanks for closing that out for me—your story was so great, and truly engaged me, I just needed to know what happened to THAT HIDEOUS WALLPAPER!
Just remember- at some point, someone loved that poor wallpaper. Like my mom loved her “harvest gold” countertops and floriferous gold and orange-brown wallpaper in the early 80’s. lol
I have a nephew. He is 30-something, lives in Iowa and works for a farm equipment company. I am pushing 70, live in a Chicago suburb and worked for a university. To say our life views and politics are different would be a masterful understatement. However, some years ago he was passing through and asked for dinner and a discussion. He said (more or less) "Your politics will never be my politics, but I want to understand WHY you think what you think." Honest. Also, surprising since he reached out first. We had dinner and my response about the "usual political topics" was to say, "There are always a variety of views and distilling them down into two diametric opposites is both inaccurate and unfair, but generally (about that topic) conservatives believe this (and why) and liberals believe that (and why). I tried to give reasoned positions for why well-meaning people (not the fringy folk) could have different views and approaches to the same topic. I then stated my opinion about each of the topics. One outcome of this approach was that he could see I had thought about both perspectives. Secondly, he could see that I didn't have a hard-left or hard-right position on the issues - life is more nuanced and each concern deserves serious consideration by itself. This approach seems to have worked. We just booked our fourth dinner together for the next time he is coming through...
I love this post…we all need to start working on our “agree to disagree” muscles as the election season draws near! 😱 Don’t take the bait dear friends…let them have their opinion… because everyone knows that brown checked wallpaper is hideous…🤣
OMGIII Your last line…”because everyone knows that brown-checked wallpaper is hideous” made me laugh out loud! I hope Thayer reads this!!! Thanks JulsB for making my morning!
It's all about reaching out isn't it? In the end our often very significant differences pale in comparison with the give and take desire for a relationship......
Both experiences exist in my life - people I disagree with and it’s an enlightening experience even when we end on different sides. (Interesting, why didn’t I write people who disagree with me?’) Then there’s the other experience where disagreement is hard, mean-spirited and leads to hurting someone or getting hurt. It’s less about the disagreement and more personal. That’s where I have to accept being misunderstood and there’s nothing I can do to change it. A quote from J. Warren Welch, “You will never be able to express yourself clearly enough for those who want to misunderstand you.”
"I do have an interest in upping the engagement of disagreement to the level where the imagination can be ignited toward change and creativity, not toward entrenchment."
I just had a poem I wrote critiqued by a thoughtful group of 7 writers. After I read your article, I realized that I had explored the parts of the critique that I didn't agree with as a way to use disagreement as a tool to ignite my creativity. I took everything, even what I didn't agree with, and said, "What if..." and tried lots of different things with the poem. Listening to the voices that I disagreed helped me find more of the poem I had been wanting to write.
I also want to start thinking that when people disagree with me, it is a blessing because they are giving me their time and thoughts and by taking it all in, I can always learn something.
Thank you so much, Pádraig, for sharing your thoughts with us. This is such a joyous space!
My marriage is Star Trek vs the Heart is a Lonely Hunter. He is plot and science and I linger in tbe worlds of mystery, literature and language. These are not as different as they seem and we have some surprising internal places of meeting but we struggle to have delicious disagreement. We struggle to be heard and understood with each other and even after all these years struggle to value our differences because of our own histories and who we are. I wish the process had gotten easier but it has not. But oddly enough we emerge from these disagreements with air cleared between us because we work through them. I much prefer this than ducking honesty in order to maintain a kind of uneasy "peace" where it becomes more important to be liked or approved of than tell the truth about who you are
“I much prefer this than ducking honesty in order to maintain a kind of uneasy "peace" where it becomes more important to be liked or approved of than tell the truth about who you are”
Oh I totally agree. Unfortunately, my family is all about hiding truths (even the simplest of them!), tip-toeing around the other members of the family, anticipating what the others are thinking, how they will react, what they need...it’s exhausting. My sister and I have had a much deeper relationship since we decided to just be honest with each other, say what we need, and what we mean.
Not sure if it's a disagreement as such, but my partner's a native Dutch speaker and I'm a native English speaker. We both speak each other's languages but no matter which language we speak we often veer off into conversations about language itself and what the other actually meant.
Time is always an issue. There are so many different meanings to the English "now" - as in right this very moment, soon, soon-ish, about to be now. Dutch has a different word for each of them.
Words and concepts don't translate 1:1 across languages so we end up mixing them into a jumbled creole.
Lloyd, I think that being able to speak more than language lends itself to a greater ability to express thoughts and concepts. Feelings are always hard to vocalize.
it also leads to a lot of confusion, both for the speaker and the listener. But after all these years, I really think that the most basic human objective is to be understood.
Language is what clothes the veins and sinews and the cultural heart of the rich traditions, feelings and beliefs in which we were raised. The norms are expressed in words and phrases that often have no exact equivalence or resonance. Even a shared language, like English for example, can mask misunderstanding when we think we are saying the same thing.
My husband & I do not often share common perspectives on life passions, vision or humor - or the same need for their articulation - but living with those differences has certainly matured my expectations & approach to our relationship. No Disney princess romance here - but neither is it the 2nd act of Sondheim's "Into the Woods;" something much more stable & solid.
My adult son and I exercise our hearts and minds when we tackle politics (and similar) in what we call "Mother-Son Podcasts" ... often heated, fast-moving, confrontational, well-considered - ALWAYS loving ... points scored for use of humor. We fancy ourselves following in the footsteps of the like of Jane & Dan from Point-Counterpoint (for SNL fans). He was once asked as part of a work group team building session "on a scale of one to ten, how comfortable are you with conflict?" His answer? "Fourteen - you should meet my family." Nothing like a good aerobic debate with someone you love and respect. Can feel a bit like "boxing footwork" for the mind! I always learn something - most importantly, about him and myself - sometimes about politics. And we laugh. #luckyMom
I was 21 (now 75). My mother was dying of cancer. Out of the blue, she asked if I had ever tried LSD. I suspect she suspected what my answer would be, given my hairstyle, beard and colorful clothing that I was recently sporting. After my "yes", she asked me about my experience, and listened attentively to my enthusiastic endorsement of the spiritual, visual, and cognitive wonders of psychedelic trips. I suspected she might be leading up to asking me to get her some to try. Instead, she ended expressing deep concerns and urging caution, saying something to the effect that anything so wonderful must contain dangers of over-indulgence and decline into addiction. I let her know that those dangers did not apply to me, that I would always be careful, and that she needn't worry. We both said we appreciated being able to talk so openly about it, and "agreed to disagree."
Shortly after she died I indulged in another trip. It was a bad one, and my last one. In my 40s I struggled with alcoholism and marijuana dependence, again ending with abstinence that has held. Turns out she was right.
I am Jewish. I do not like it when people of all stripes call us jews.
I had this conversation with a very close friend who did not see my point. What is wrong with calling us jews he asked.
I explained that we are Jewish people and that calling us jews was insulting. We disagreed. Surprisingly, some time passed and he told me he had changed his mind and thought I was right.
In fact. I don't like seeing other people called black, or in fact any of those labels.
That same friend read through some writings of native American tribes. In them they referred to people as people.
I love this Jeffrey. Thank you SO much for this Wisdom (uppercase W intended). Words matter—they really do. And often people don’t stop at just “jews.” They say “THE jews.” Even more offensive. And I am so grateful you brought in our First Nations Indigenous peoples. We’ve lost so much by not honoring the Wisdom that still resides within their blood.
Can there be real trust and love without disagreement?
I have this theory that disagreement, or the ability to disagree, is a key sign of a truly loving and trust-filled relationship. I was not raised in an environment where I could test this theory out. Mine was a household of fake kindness and what I recently learned has a name, "toxic positivity". The message i absorbed as a child was, if you disagree with me then you don't love me. Family unity at all costs. The cost? No one speaks truth. Love is shallow. There is no real intimacy.
After 30 years of marriage, my partner and I are still learning how to disagree with each other. And our love deepens.
this is a great term "toxic positivity". It is rampant in parts of my family. What I find so toxic is how positive the toxic can appear and have a nasty or shallow undercurrent that is absolutely intolerable to me. The same is true of poetry right? This is what I believe poetry attempts to undercut with its vehicles for cutting to the heart of truth.
Thank you for sharing that, Tracy. Profound. And absolutely, spot-on, TRUTH.
My partner and I often debate a point until I suggest we’re saying the same thing from different perspectives -- at which point I laugh and he grimaces. I love loving someone who cares about the same things from a different angle. When I suggest he’s a pessimist, he says he’s a realist. And when he grins, it’s the best grin.
I can relate to this!
Most of the time it’s amusing and enriching!
Ah well it's enriching in our case but we are still working on amusing lol!
You’ll get there!
“Delicious disagreement” is such a wonderful way of saying I care what my son thinks even when it is different from what I believe. Sometimes when we debate a topic on text, there can be misunderstanding, and we need to avoid such temptation. But in the face-to-face “environment of trust and love” we share when together, I feel comforted by our conversations and attempts to make our thoughts known to one another. Thank you, Padraig, for so eloquently and lovingly explaining this truth about the importance of meaningful relationships.
Thank you much for hints on how to approach or reframe disagreements - with creativity and possible change.
Will keep it jovial by sharing how my husband and my good friend share a love for well-browned toast (which I refer to as “burnt”) while I prefer lightly toasted, which they call “warm bread.” It is a lovely and continuing jest we share with one another. Now I’m off to enjoy my lightly toasted bread with apricot jam!
Ooo...if all disagreements were like that we would perhaps enjoy world peace! Let us praise our daily bread!
Years ago my friend Betsy moved into an old farmhouse. When my friend Suzanne and I came to visit, we were immediately struck by the brown and white large-checked wallpaper in the kitchen. I immediately declared it hideous and Betsy joined my chorus, saying removing it was on the top of her priority list. We made quite a ruckus about how ugly it was. But Suzanne said, while she didn't particularly like it, our pronouncements about it were only opinions and we shouldn't be so critical. I maintained that there is such a thing as "standards" when it comes to art and decoration and that no one in their right mind would find the wallpaper attractive. Suzanne held her ground, and we continued the disagreement laughing and teasing each other, pretending that the kitchen walls were a matter of great importance. Now, years later, that conversation stays with me as I continue to examine my own entrenched prejudices and certainty about other things. I listen to people say, "How could anyone think ..." (fill in the blank), and realize they have closed the door to deeper understanding and empathy - have, in that one phrase, destroyed an opportunity for connection. I still say the wallpaper in Betsy's kitchen was objectively atrocious, but I say it with a chuckle, knowing that there's room for so much more.
"How could anyone think ..." (fill in the blank), and realize they have closed the door to deeper understanding and empathy - have, in that one phrase, destroyed an opportunity for connection." Thayer, this made me tear up. I am writing this on my heart. Thank you. Beautiful.
Thank you, Mona. I still have so much to learn!!
Same. A beautiful post I will come back to and reread.
Sooo…. Is the wallpaper still there?
No! Getting rid of it was truly one of the first things Betsy did when she and her husband moved into the house. She replaced it with a soft grayish paint - inviting, warm and soothing.
That is so awesome! Thanks for closing that out for me—your story was so great, and truly engaged me, I just needed to know what happened to THAT HIDEOUS WALLPAPER!
Just remember- at some point, someone loved that poor wallpaper. Like my mom loved her “harvest gold” countertops and floriferous gold and orange-brown wallpaper in the early 80’s. lol
I have a nephew. He is 30-something, lives in Iowa and works for a farm equipment company. I am pushing 70, live in a Chicago suburb and worked for a university. To say our life views and politics are different would be a masterful understatement. However, some years ago he was passing through and asked for dinner and a discussion. He said (more or less) "Your politics will never be my politics, but I want to understand WHY you think what you think." Honest. Also, surprising since he reached out first. We had dinner and my response about the "usual political topics" was to say, "There are always a variety of views and distilling them down into two diametric opposites is both inaccurate and unfair, but generally (about that topic) conservatives believe this (and why) and liberals believe that (and why). I tried to give reasoned positions for why well-meaning people (not the fringy folk) could have different views and approaches to the same topic. I then stated my opinion about each of the topics. One outcome of this approach was that he could see I had thought about both perspectives. Secondly, he could see that I didn't have a hard-left or hard-right position on the issues - life is more nuanced and each concern deserves serious consideration by itself. This approach seems to have worked. We just booked our fourth dinner together for the next time he is coming through...
I love this post…we all need to start working on our “agree to disagree” muscles as the election season draws near! 😱 Don’t take the bait dear friends…let them have their opinion… because everyone knows that brown checked wallpaper is hideous…🤣
OMGIII Your last line…”because everyone knows that brown-checked wallpaper is hideous” made me laugh out loud! I hope Thayer reads this!!! Thanks JulsB for making my morning!
I got it!
HA!!! That’s priceless, JulsB.
It's all about reaching out isn't it? In the end our often very significant differences pale in comparison with the give and take desire for a relationship......
Both experiences exist in my life - people I disagree with and it’s an enlightening experience even when we end on different sides. (Interesting, why didn’t I write people who disagree with me?’) Then there’s the other experience where disagreement is hard, mean-spirited and leads to hurting someone or getting hurt. It’s less about the disagreement and more personal. That’s where I have to accept being misunderstood and there’s nothing I can do to change it. A quote from J. Warren Welch, “You will never be able to express yourself clearly enough for those who want to misunderstand you.”
“...where disagreement is hard, mean-spirited and leads to hurting...” This struck me with memories of that experience. Thanks for the quote.
Look out for uncontrolled egos!
Thank you MaryBeth. A wonderful reflection in this beautiful thread. And…
“Sometimes it’s not WHAT you say that matters. Sometimes, HOW you say it is the thing that matters most.”
I love your quote. It takes time and effort to get past that kind of attitude.
The J. Warren Welch quote is a keeper.
My husband’s love language is a spread sheet. Mine is poetry. He is my first reader.
♥️
"I do have an interest in upping the engagement of disagreement to the level where the imagination can be ignited toward change and creativity, not toward entrenchment."
I just had a poem I wrote critiqued by a thoughtful group of 7 writers. After I read your article, I realized that I had explored the parts of the critique that I didn't agree with as a way to use disagreement as a tool to ignite my creativity. I took everything, even what I didn't agree with, and said, "What if..." and tried lots of different things with the poem. Listening to the voices that I disagreed helped me find more of the poem I had been wanting to write.
I also want to start thinking that when people disagree with me, it is a blessing because they are giving me their time and thoughts and by taking it all in, I can always learn something.
Thank you so much, Pádraig, for sharing your thoughts with us. This is such a joyous space!
Awesome perspective, Mona! Thank you!!
My marriage is Star Trek vs the Heart is a Lonely Hunter. He is plot and science and I linger in tbe worlds of mystery, literature and language. These are not as different as they seem and we have some surprising internal places of meeting but we struggle to have delicious disagreement. We struggle to be heard and understood with each other and even after all these years struggle to value our differences because of our own histories and who we are. I wish the process had gotten easier but it has not. But oddly enough we emerge from these disagreements with air cleared between us because we work through them. I much prefer this than ducking honesty in order to maintain a kind of uneasy "peace" where it becomes more important to be liked or approved of than tell the truth about who you are
“I much prefer this than ducking honesty in order to maintain a kind of uneasy "peace" where it becomes more important to be liked or approved of than tell the truth about who you are”
Oh I totally agree. Unfortunately, my family is all about hiding truths (even the simplest of them!), tip-toeing around the other members of the family, anticipating what the others are thinking, how they will react, what they need...it’s exhausting. My sister and I have had a much deeper relationship since we decided to just be honest with each other, say what we need, and what we mean.
I'm so glad you found a way with your sister Mandy! It isn't easy but you're right it's exhausting to constantly buffer the truth
Not sure if it's a disagreement as such, but my partner's a native Dutch speaker and I'm a native English speaker. We both speak each other's languages but no matter which language we speak we often veer off into conversations about language itself and what the other actually meant.
Time is always an issue. There are so many different meanings to the English "now" - as in right this very moment, soon, soon-ish, about to be now. Dutch has a different word for each of them.
Words and concepts don't translate 1:1 across languages so we end up mixing them into a jumbled creole.
Lloyd, I think that being able to speak more than language lends itself to a greater ability to express thoughts and concepts. Feelings are always hard to vocalize.
it also leads to a lot of confusion, both for the speaker and the listener. But after all these years, I really think that the most basic human objective is to be understood.
Language is what clothes the veins and sinews and the cultural heart of the rich traditions, feelings and beliefs in which we were raised. The norms are expressed in words and phrases that often have no exact equivalence or resonance. Even a shared language, like English for example, can mask misunderstanding when we think we are saying the same thing.
My husband & I do not often share common perspectives on life passions, vision or humor - or the same need for their articulation - but living with those differences has certainly matured my expectations & approach to our relationship. No Disney princess romance here - but neither is it the 2nd act of Sondheim's "Into the Woods;" something much more stable & solid.
I just bought your audiobook after over a year of being blessed by Poetry Unbound.
I absolutely love it.
Your curation, musings on the poems, voice, space in the podcast, everything, are a gift to the world. 🙏🏼🧡
I agree, Chris!
And Padraig, thank you for this clarity about the delightful aspects of disagreement. 🌱
My adult son and I exercise our hearts and minds when we tackle politics (and similar) in what we call "Mother-Son Podcasts" ... often heated, fast-moving, confrontational, well-considered - ALWAYS loving ... points scored for use of humor. We fancy ourselves following in the footsteps of the like of Jane & Dan from Point-Counterpoint (for SNL fans). He was once asked as part of a work group team building session "on a scale of one to ten, how comfortable are you with conflict?" His answer? "Fourteen - you should meet my family." Nothing like a good aerobic debate with someone you love and respect. Can feel a bit like "boxing footwork" for the mind! I always learn something - most importantly, about him and myself - sometimes about politics. And we laugh. #luckyMom
I LOVE this, Karen!! I love you can use humor to diffuse a potentially tense situation. Thank you for sharing.
I was 21 (now 75). My mother was dying of cancer. Out of the blue, she asked if I had ever tried LSD. I suspect she suspected what my answer would be, given my hairstyle, beard and colorful clothing that I was recently sporting. After my "yes", she asked me about my experience, and listened attentively to my enthusiastic endorsement of the spiritual, visual, and cognitive wonders of psychedelic trips. I suspected she might be leading up to asking me to get her some to try. Instead, she ended expressing deep concerns and urging caution, saying something to the effect that anything so wonderful must contain dangers of over-indulgence and decline into addiction. I let her know that those dangers did not apply to me, that I would always be careful, and that she needn't worry. We both said we appreciated being able to talk so openly about it, and "agreed to disagree."
Shortly after she died I indulged in another trip. It was a bad one, and my last one. In my 40s I struggled with alcoholism and marijuana dependence, again ending with abstinence that has held. Turns out she was right.
Hi Padraig
I have enjoyed reading your emails quite a lot.
As for disagreements, I do have my opinions.
I am Jewish. I do not like it when people of all stripes call us jews.
I had this conversation with a very close friend who did not see my point. What is wrong with calling us jews he asked.
I explained that we are Jewish people and that calling us jews was insulting. We disagreed. Surprisingly, some time passed and he told me he had changed his mind and thought I was right.
In fact. I don't like seeing other people called black, or in fact any of those labels.
That same friend read through some writings of native American tribes. In them they referred to people as people.
I love this Jeffrey. Thank you SO much for this Wisdom (uppercase W intended). Words matter—they really do. And often people don’t stop at just “jews.” They say “THE jews.” Even more offensive. And I am so grateful you brought in our First Nations Indigenous peoples. We’ve lost so much by not honoring the Wisdom that still resides within their blood.